The Cautionary Tale of Robins Two and Four
by Get Real Or Die
Summary: Stephanie's alive but what's she doing with Jason Todd of all people? Jason has a plan. Maybe. Post resurrection, Stephanie struggles to understand her place in this new world and who to trust when Jason is Jason and there's nothing else to believe in.
1. Prologue

AN: Spoilers for War Games, Infinite Crisis, and One Year Later. Anything else is also fair game. The story will be switching point of views. I'm thinking of doing it through the eyes of the whole bat family but for now, probably just between Jason Todd and Stephanie.

Prologue

Stephanie spat out a mouthful of blood before speaking (or if you want to be technical, gasping).

"I think I'd like a nemesis."

Jason looked up from where he was crouched over her legs and paused from working her over.

"What was that?"

Stephanie winced before sitting up. Well, she mused, Jason was training her and she was getting better, but did she really have to end up broken and bleeding at the end of every single training session they had?

Probably.

She did have an extremely high tolerance for pain and Jason never failed to keep that in mind when they sparred.

"You know the yin to my yang, the Lex Luthor to my Superman. Someone that is my enemy to such a great extent that no matter how many other enemies we have, we'll always end up fighting each other. Kind of circular in a way."

Jason just gives her this look. He gives her those kind of looks a lot, Stephanie's noticed. Like… he was waiting for something from her and she wasn't delivering. More than she hated those looks, Stephanie hated the gut churning feeling she always got in her stomach when they were directed towards her. Stephanie sighs before picking herself up off the ground and getting something to drink from the fridge.

"Never mind Jason. Just thinking out loud."


	2. Rebirth  Stephanie POV

Chapter 1

The first thing Stephanie remembers is this clawing panic deep inside her.

When she first opened her eyes, it was to total darkness. All around her was dank, depressing emptiness lined with satin. She pounded and pounded but it wouldn't give. Her prison was a prison that she couldn't escape. Somewhere deep within her mind, she had realized desperation wouldn't work. Neither would tearing at the satin above her while her lungs grew heavy with lack of oxygen.

She broke free with brute force.

Punching in a concentrated area was the best she could do. Thump. Gasp. Thump. Gasp. Thump. Gasp. Tears were streaming from her eyes, but they obscured nothing because she could see nothing. Darkness and emptiness devoid completely of light were two entirely different things and in her prison, Stephanie experienced the latter.

Punching rapidly now, she received a cascade of dirt raining down upon her. It signified the release from her prison but the dirt kept coming. Kicking and stroking now, she only knows to go upwards. Through dirt that's bitter in her mouth and gritty in her still leaking eyes, she goes upwards. And as her hand breaks the surface, she first felt a breeze of chilling wind caress her hand.

The second thing she felt was a hand grasping hers and she grabbed onto it with all the strength she had left.

When her head broke the surface of the dirt, the first thing she saw was the moon. Bright and mesmerizing to behold, it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

The second thing she saw was God.

He stood there in a jacket as black as the night around her and a helmet at his feet as red as blood. Coughing and gasping, she spoke for the first time in years. Though it scratched her throat and hurt her terribly, she spoke.

"What… Who are you?"

Then god smiled down at her and though she lay on her hands and knees exhausted with hands wounded from making her way out of her prison, she felt warm inside.

"My name's Jason. I'm your brother."


	3. Second Chances Jason POV

Chapter 2

It wasn't fair.

Say what you will: life isn't fair; those are the hard knocks, etc, etc.

But it wasn't fair.

What was it about the two of them that made it so easy to discount them, so easy to dismiss them? Was it because they came after the golden boys and were found unforgivably inferior by comparison? What was it about Jason himself that made him not good enough to get a memorial in the Hall of Fallen Titans? What was it that made him just a suit in a case in the bat cave, a blurb (A Good Soldier, and oh how that rankled) on a plaque, a tale for the rest of the bat family (and wasn't that the most terrible joke ever?) to sigh over?

What was it that made them all laugh and scoff at their best efforts?

But they weren't laughing now were they.

From the moment he had hit Gotham with his new alias, the Gotham underground had been shaken to its core. And he had gotten the story on Black Mask just to see how hard it would be to take away his power base. With that came some tidbits on what had been happening in Gotham since he'd been gone. And what he found out had shocked, angered, and disgusted him.

A girl Robin.

War Games.

Stephanie tortured and killed.

It was surprisingly easy to break into the cave and learn the back-story after procuring a distraction for Batman. It didn't matter that Bruce would know he had been there after the fact. All that mattered was he learned what had happened. And he did.

Every single thing.

Stephanie Brown, daughter of the Cluemaster and Crystal Brown, codename Spoiler. Athletic, blonde, pretty. Self-absorbed, unprepared, fired. 48 days. She was Robin for 48 days and then she was gone. No second chances. So to impress Batman, she had planned to bring together all the gangs in Gotham under one figurehead. Only one thing though.

She didn't know Matches Malone was Batman. Hell, she didn't even know Bruce Wayne was actually Batman. And in the end, she didn't even get a case.

What was it about her that made Stephanie so forgettable? What was it that made them throw her out of their training again and again? What was it about her that made Barbara so vehement in her case notes about her? Was it the same thing they sensed (the same stupidity, the same weakness) that had gotten her pregnant? That had made him shield his whore of a mother's body, knowing they were both going to die anyway? That made them second rate vigilantes instead of leaders of teams like Dick and Tim?

Back in Gotham after that touching reunion with his "brothers" (and despite everything that's happened between them, there's still a part of Jason that's hurt they'd think he'd murdered Duela), Jason decides he's not going to accept the unfair. He doesn't know why he came back from the dead and he doesn't know if there's something like that in store for Stephanie.

But what he does know?

They both made mistakes that inadvertently led to their deaths. They probably weren't good enough to be Robin when it came right down to it. Their parents were criminals or balls of nervous messes and no one had really wanted them around. They had been convenient. They had been expendable.

But they had been Robins. Even if that didn't mean anything to Bruce (at least when it wasn't directly connected to his golden boys), it meant something to Jason. Because Tim had Dick and they were brothers and pals and partners. Jason was tired of looking in from the outside on all the camaraderie. He was tired of being alone.

So after getting the help of Talia al Ghul and through her, Felix Faust (the only cost was teaching him some skilled hand to hand combat), Jason was going to give Stephanie her second chance. She'd be a blank slate to write on, just like he was before Talia threw him in the pit. He'd train and teach her, show her all the things Batman and little Timmy wouldn't. They were going to clean out this city his way and they'd be the screw-ups if that's how Bruce wanted them to be. But if Jason had his way? They'd be together.

And he wouldn't be alone anymore.

And no one would be laughing.

Not when he was done.

Because all life's a game. A game he's lost (the nightmares he has and the scar on his throat are trophies to that sentiment), a game that's stupid and makes him tired but a game he'll keep on playing just the same, a game that had consequences (see Bruce, I did learn something from you after all) and failures.

Stephanie was going to be on his side though.

So maybe they'd actually win their second round.

AN: Felix Faust is notoriously spare at hand to hand combat, so I figured that while a sorcerer of his level would be willing to bring Stephanie back just because he could, he would also want something from Jason in return. The scar on Jason's throat is from Batman. When Jason returned, he had threatened to kill the Joker himself unless Batman did it. To stop him, Jason told Batman he'd have to kill Jason. Batman threw a batarang effectively stopping Jason.


	4. Happy Endings Stephanie POV

AN: I figured out the timeline for this story to an extent. Okay. The thing with Duela Dent happened but instead of becoming Red Robin after the crotch-kicking extravaganza with Tim and Dick, he came back to Gotham and planned to resurrect Stephanie.

Chapter 3

Eight Months After

Gotham was beautiful at night.

You just had to know where to look.

Stephanie adored Jason. He was everything to her and she owed him her life. Literally.

That being said, he had no taste for truly aesthetically pleasing things.

Sure, if he saw an awesome car he'd comment on it and depending on the model, just plain damn near salivate. Same thing for a beautiful girl or a well tuned engine.

He would never be able to understand why she found Gotham so damned beautiful in the moonlight.

Though, it was true Jason could surprise her on occasion.

She loved her brother, but sometimes Stephanie wondered if she truly knew him.

If she could ever truly know him.

He talked about things sometimes. Who he had been and why he couldn't be that person anymore. He woke up from nightmares sometimes and he always woke up from those shielding his face and upper body from some invisible attacker only he could see in his mind's eye. He slept during the day (if he slept at all), and spent all the nighttime hours out and about or in a whirlwind of frenzy. He was crazy about his knives and his motorcycle to an annoying extent. He'd spent months beating on her until she wasn't too stupid, wasn't too slow to hit him back and put him down.

She never knew what facet of him she'd see when she observed him because Jason had almost too many sides to count.

He could be sweet, face softened by the plight of a runaway child or battered woman and sometimes he believed in destroying the injustice in Gotham so much, she could see the anger and sadness it caused him to see people in the situations they were in, by their own device or by others.

Sometimes he scared her so much she felt like edging away from him, away from her designated spot to his right, though she would never. Jason hated rapists and pimps with fervor and he had no problem showing them how much while he told them exactly why they were going to be dying that night.

There were the times where he would make risqué jokes and tell her stories made up from the top of his head. The only times he failed to make her laugh while he was like this was when they would get to the inevitable part of the tragic, grisly death that always awaited the lead or co-starring characters. None of Jason's stories had very happy endings. And those that did? They always came with strings attached.

Days came when he would pull her flush against his side as they sat on their stoop while they watched the sunrise. On these days, he looks straight ahead and tells her the story about a boy (in parts, fragments always shifting and story incomplete) who had a pretty bad life (with an even worse temper) and then one day out of the blue, got the greatest break a kid like him could possibly get. He tells her how the boy felt inadequate at almost every turn; at almost every moment. Then, the boy put on a multi-colored costume and flew through the air with his heart full of joy like he knew he was the most beautiful bird in the sky. But the boy, even knowing that he found what he wanted to do until the day he died, had to contend with a stubborn mentor who at all times insisted it be his way or the highway. One day, the boy finally chose the highway and left nothing in his wake but a mask and his plumage suspended in a glass case built with grief and a chisel. And in the end, no one would ever see past the engraving placed on his tomb that soon turned into all the boy ever was and all that he could ever be.

All in loving memory, of course.

Days like those she knows that while not all of the stories Jason tells are fables, none of them have a happy ending. Ever.

He was incomprehensible to her. As different from her as night and day, in some aspects. While he slept the daytime hours away, she went forth into Gotham and watched the people who could never comprehend the life she nor Jason led. She mingled with them, ate in their restaurants, laughed at the bad jokes.

And she choked. She choked on her disbelief and confusion.

These were the people her brother tore himself up about? This was the cross he seemed to hike up on his shoulders every so often just so that he could carry it just a bit longer down a road he wasn't allowed to walk on any more?

It baffled her.

Why? Why do this? Why live this way? Why would anybody choose this in any, way, shape, or form? How could anyone possibly do so?

And when she confronted him, he told her just one more story. The last.

A story about a girl who was dismissed and discarded constantly and without end. About how she tried but failed, punched but missed, attempted to fly but was sent crashing to the ground in flames. The girl mingled with another; one who played at masquerade (at mimicry) and who once glanced upon, gave a chase she would never truly catch up to. And then there was the stubborn mentor who tried to send her away because her face was too familiar; too much like another whose memory stuck around like a phantom, curling beneath her skirts and about her face. But she wouldn't be dismissed again; she soared in on an air of fear and hope, demanding to be granted wings. Wings and plumage tailored exactly for her.

Oh! And how she soared!

But not for long at all. The mentor never could ever really see her true face and called her 'bird' and thought of her as others; others he failed and others she'd never match up to. And thus, she plummeted to earth in a spiral. And landed hard. Dazed and confused, the girl devises a plan so she could fly again. But like a ripple effect her plan, flawed and doomed to failure, causes chaos and anarchy everywhere. In one last fit of attempted redemption she turns her head away from a dishonorable chance to save herself, hoping that if her final moments have to be ones of agony they should at least be tinged with a battered but standing dignity.

It wasn't so.

A cruel joke planned and executed; the punch line her death sentence. The bad pun disciplined with hands for once not forged with steel and encased in the softest of kid gloves. Unfunny joke dealt with boos instead of the ejection the comic deserved. Mentor here, if only in that final dreadful hour. Promises are made that are fragilely built at best if not entirely spun into the air out of wishes. It's just one of life's truths that if you made a promise weakly, it would easily be broken. And these promises could not stand on their own merit with no true intention behind them. Death makes it easy to whisper words you know will soon become meaningless through no effort of your own. One final lie is told but the lie brings peace to the girl who becomes no more.

And just in case you were wondering?

The girl never did get that chance to really fly (alone and free), not once. Her plumage and mask was sent back to the nothing it came from, construction of a memorial of any kind discarded without second or even first thought.

If Stephanie had known that was going to be the last story Jason ever told her, she would have etched the previous ones in her memories. Some of those strings-attached happy endings suddenly seemed a bit more appealing.

But Jason told her everything because the one thing none of the facets of Jason had ever liked, any of them at all? It was to be damn near cross-examined. He didn't want you asking questions because they bored him. He told you what you were trying to pry at (or just dumped a hell of a lot of information at you) and dismissed you from his sight for the time being at the very least.

And since this had never happened to her, the ensuing epiphany was extra bright.

Stephanie still didn't understand her brother and now faced with these truths, realized she has always been pretty incomprehensible to herself as well.

There were things about Jason she would never know. Like why he always looked wistful when he takes the first bite out of any cookies she bakes. Or why he wore that scar on his neck with an air of injured pride and grief when it was no different from the others on his body as far as she could understand it. She'd probably never know why he went to Crime Alley by himself when she usually went everywhere with him but never there; not ever.

These things were stuff she couldn't change about Jason despite their incomprehensibility to her mind. These were things she wouldn't change if it came down to it. Love didn't require understanding and maybe that would come in time.

Her own blank slate bothers her even less.

She couldn't remember the first boy she kissed, what the last day of school she had attended before she died had been like, or what it had felt like to feel that rush of triumph as she swung across the sky on her first expertly cast grappling hook. Years of her life were empty and there was a void where her dreams and aspirations had once thrived in Technicolor.

She didn't want them.

She'd seen the tapes and read the reports and analyzed what Jason had told her, and had come to a startling conclusion: she was better this way.

She'd seen herself on those tapes and it disgusted her. Jason pushed her harder than the girl on that grainy footage had ever been pushed in her life. The reports of her autopsy sickened her and there was nothing that was a part of who she was now that would have let Black Mask torture her to death instead of picking up that gun and killing him.

She feared death now because she knew better. Knew what it was like to have to crawl out of her own coffin in the middle of the night. Knew what it was like to dust grave dirt out of her hair and spit it out from her mouth. Stephanie knew what it was like below the ground and on the days when she had her own nightmares to contend with?

She knew she'd do anything to never go back.

And that was the crucible right there. She felt better and fought better than anything she'd seen of the girl in that years old file footage and something about being dead had made her never want to be in a situation like that again.

Because in that situation?

The life she saved would be her own.

These things were facets of who she was now. Maybe even of who she had been once upon a time.

But then again……

"Commissioner?"

Stephanie straightened from where she was leaning against the lit Batsignal that was pointed toward the sky. Her head rose from where it had been lowered in contemplation. As she stepped out from the shadows, her eyes took in every detail of the man before her. Her mind catalogued things like his height and weight but these were things she already knew and knew well.

She just wanted to see him up close and personal.

Stephanie pushes the shield off her helmet, enjoying the look of recognition on Batman's face.

"I just wanted to get a lay of the land."

Then her visor's snapped back on and with a running leap followed by a shot of her grappling hook, she's airborne.

There's not going to be any happy endings here.

Not for anyone.

AN: The 'after' refers to Stephanie's resurrection in chapter one. While an important plot piece, though not the only one I will explore regarding Steph and Jason's issues, I'm utilizing this method for two reasons. 1: I intend to slide backwards and forwards on the timeline and this is as an effective 'absolute zero' as any other point I could possibly use. And 2: As I explore the pov's of other members of the batfamily, I want the 'before' and 'after' timestamps as a guide of sorts to who knows what and when they know it.

Feedback appreciated.


End file.
